Associate Product Manager

Clasp is a mission-driven, venture-backed startup transforming access to education and career pathways. A college education was always meant to lead to economic mobility. But with rising costs and shrinking loan availability, many working-class and first-generation students don’t have the money they need to finish school. That’s where Clasp comes in. We’re the market leader in institutionally funded gap loan programs. We partner with schools to design, launch and manage lending programs that keep students enrolled, graduating and thriving. Fresh off our Series B, Clasp is entering its next phase of growth. Recent recognition includes: TIME’s Best Inventions of 2026 (Loan-Linked Hiring) Business Insider: Top 14 Healthcare Startups to Watch in 2026 and 43 Startups to Bet Your Career On in 2025 Our work spans two business lines: Clasp Talent helps healthcare employers attract and retain critical talent by connecting them with diverse candidates and using student loan repayment as a powerful recruiting and retention tool. We meaningfully connect employers, educational institutions, and learners to drive mutual benefit. Clasp Finance equips colleges and universities with lending technology to launch and operate their own private student loan programs, enabling schools to step in and support their students directly with financial aid. Recent federal financial aid changes are reshaping how institutions think about supporting their students, and Clasp Finance is poised to meet this moment. Who We Need Clasp is hiring its first Associate Product Manager. You'll work alongside our Product Managers across Clasp Talent to understand our users, turn what we learn into clear specs, help keep our system and partner data in sync, and measure whether what we ship is working. This is a broad, hands‑on role. You'll support discovery with students and employers, write the stories and follow‑up tickets that keep engineering moving, and own the loop from launch to impact: telling the company what's shipping, building the dashboards that track it, and reporting back on what changed. You'll also be a product partner to Partner Success and Operations on complex partner setups and data quality. For example, when a participant's eligibility changes and they qualify for a lower benefit amount, you'll help work out when the new amount should take effect, what happens to payments already scheduled, and what else in our system needs to update to stay in sync. You’ll report to our Senior Product Manager, with coaching from our Director of Product, and work closely with Engineering, Design, Partner Success, and Operations. There is a clear path to Product Manager, which we're targeting in about 12 months depending on your growth and the team's needs. What You’ll Do Discovery and user feedback Interview students and employer users, run surveys, and synthesize what you hear into insights PMs can act on. Gather feedback from support tickets, Partner Success, sales calls, and usage data, and spot the patterns across them. Run short research projects, such as competitive reviews or vendor evaluations, that feed roadmap decisions. Specs and delivery Draft user stories, requirements, and acceptance criteria with PMs and engineers. After a release, track how features land, write follow‑up tickets and fast‑follows, and file clear, reproducible bug tickets. Systems and data integrity Advise Partner Success and Implementation on complex or unusual partner setups, helping them work out what the partner is really asking for and how our system should handle it. Help keep our system in sync with partner data from HRIS and payroll integrations. Learn which data drives which rules, notice when they drift apart, and turn recurring issues into product fixes. Partner with Operations on data backfills and cleanup. Spot recurring data quality issues, define the scope of the fix, check the results, and tell the affected teams what changed. Think through how product and rule changes affect participants, payments, and reporting, and explain the impact clearly to internal teams and partners. Launch and impact Before launch, work with PMs to define what success looks like and confirm we can measure it. Write release notes so Partner Success, Sales, and leadership know what's shipping, why it matters, and what it should change. Create demos, walkthrough videos, and launch materials that build excitement for new features with internal teams and partners, showing the real problem each one solves and the value it brings. Build and maintain dashboards that show whether features are being adopted and moving the metrics we expected. Share 30- and 60-day impact readouts on what we expected versus what happened, and turn the gaps into follow‑up work. What You’ll Need 1 to 3 years of experience in product, analytics, product operations, implementation, consulting, or a similar role. Data skills: you've built dashboards people use, you use SQL to answer questions and to check data quality and validate results, and you're comfortable with a product analytics tool such as PostHog, Amplitude, or Mixpanel. Measurement instinct: you can define what success looks like for a feature and tell a real result from noise. Systems thinking: you trace how data and rules interact, spot edge cases and conflicts, and ask "and then what happens?" before anything goes live. User curiosity: you've talked to users directly and can separate what they ask for from what they need. Clear writing: your specs and tickets are easy for engineers to act on, and you can explain technical logic to non-technical partners. Technical comfort: you understand how software gets built and work well with engineers. Ownership: you follow through on all your work even the details, including the behind-the-scenes work, and flag problems early. What We Give In Return Competitive cash and equity compensation 401k + match Flexible PTO policy Opportunities to grow and perform in a fast‑paced environment alongside a stellar team. The salary range for this position is competitive and will be commensurate with the candidate's experience, qualifications, and industry knowledge, ranging between $85,000 to $100,00 annually. In addition to the base salary, we offer an attractive equity component as part of our compensation package, providing an opportunity for eligible employees to share in the success and growth of our company. We are committed to offering competitive compensation and benefits packages to attract and retain top talent. Work authorization This role is not eligible for immigration sponsorship, now or in the future. Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States for any employer. How we use AI in hiring Clasp uses AI‑assisted tools in parts of our hiring process, such as AI notetakers transcribing or summarizing interviews, scheduling, and supporting evaluation in technical assessments. Humans review applications and make every hiring decision. AI tools don't make final decisions about any candidate. You're welcome to use AI to research Clasp and prepare, but during live interviews and assessments we want to hear your own thinking, so please don't use AI tools that generate or feed you responses in real time. If you'd like to be evaluated without AI tools, need an accommodation, or have questions about how we use these tools, email View email address on click.appcast.io and we'll arrange another process where we can. Equal opportunity Clasp is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We don't discriminate based on race, color, religion, creed, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, ancestry, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, veteran or military status, citizenship status (except as required by law), or any other status protected by federal, state, or local law. Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered in line with applicable fair chance laws. If you need a reasonable accommodation during the hiring process, email View email address on click.appcast.io. #J-18808-Ljbffr Clasp